Science Musings Blog

Monday, April 16, 2007

The Higgs

Consider the recent cover of Science reproduced above. You are looking at the Compact Muon Solenoid, one of the several particle detectors being prepared for next year's debut of CERN's Large Hadron Collider particle accelerating machine. The detector weighs 13,000 metric tons and is installed in a hall 10 meters underground. You can get some sense of scale by comparing it to the two physicists in the lower left corner. The accelerator itself resides in a 27 kilometer-long circular tunnel on the French-Swiss border. It will generate energies seven times higher than any previous "atom smasher." The cost? Billions.

And what do the physicists hope to see? They would be very happy to produce the Higgs boson, the so-called "God particle", a hypothetical subatomic particle predicted by current theory. The Higgs, if it can be coaxed into existence, will endure for only a tiny fraction of a second. To tell the truth, the researchers don't know what they will find as they push their energies ever closer to those that existed in the immediate aftermath of the big bang.

Implausibly, a subatomic-sized black hole created in the accelerator, might gobble up the Earth, or, alternately, a stable "strangelet" might accrete ordinary matter and convert it into strange matter. Poof! The end of the world. But not to worry. If the physicists suck the world into oblivion, it will happen so fast that we won't have time to wring our hands and rue.

Some folks call the giant particle accelerating machines the Gothic cathedrals of our time. The medieval cathedrals at least promised eternal life to the poor believing souls who provided the funds. The European taxpayers who are mostly footing the bill for the Large Hadron Collider will get scant reward for their bucks -- a particle that has vanished within microseconds of its creation. But, Lordy, even skeptics must admit that the thing is a wonder -- the most elaborate machine ever conceived and executed by the human mind.

Some years ago, Britain's Minister for Science, William Waldegrave, issued a challenge: Can physicists explain -- on a single sheet of paper -- what the Higgs boson is, and why it is important to find it? The taxpaying public, he said, has a right to ask "Why?" He offered a bottle of vintage champagne for the best response. Not one to pass up a drink, I offered the following -- in verse:

Democritus imagineda world of atomsbumping in the void(we are abuzz with them,he thought). Leucippusand Lucretius gave ascent. And so it went till Thomson,Rutherford, and othersdiscovered nature's trinity--electrons, protons, neutrons.How simple! These threewere enough to explainall that exists. But wait.As physicists bangedthese particles about, othersproliferated like bubblesin champagne -- pions,muons, neutrinos, quarks, and so forth -- a froth of troublesfor searchers of simplicity.More! Electrons, for example,interact, repelling. How?By exchanging photons, RichardFeynman said. Quarks tooget sticky by passing gluonsback and forth (a subtle bitof Dicky physics, but it worked).And what of the force called"weak" between, say, a neutronand an electron, clearlynot electric. Well, let thoseparticles too exchange a kindof anti-glue, called W's and Z's.All these -- and more -- the physicists found with their machines (God's plan, it seems,is not inscrutable to man).But one, alas! The Higgs,the heaviest of all, the particlethat passing back and forthgives all the others mass. To make it will require more energy and pursethan you and I possess.To make things worse,no one knows for sure exactlywhat the Higgs might be, or ifit exists at all. Lest the physicist'searnest pleas for funds fallon unreceptive ears, callit "the God Particle." There! Who will deny so granda quest: to wrest God'ssecret plan from nature's grasp.Cough up. A billion, please, or ten. Send those protonsflying on their circumferentialpath, to crash, to splattera shower of Higgses. Ephemeral,costly, inconsequential,yet -- a flash, a radiance of mind,the dream of Democritus confirmed at last. The Final Theory(for the time being). What's that, you say? No cash?Then share, Mr. Minister,at least, your bottle of champagne,perhaps in vino to inspire the folksin Geneva (and the U. S. andRussia and Japan) to finda cheaper way. The search for the bosongoes on.